Apple Hiring To Extend Battery Life For Laptops Running OSX

As the desktop becomes less and less used and the tablet more and more prevalent many companies will need to extend the battery life of laptops. Outside of power users and their desktops and computer users who type far too much to use a tablet there is a genuine gap in battery improvement. After decades of laptops becoming popular, the lives of laptop batteries are still quite limited. Few computer makers have found much in the way of life after three hours. Apple appears however, through a couple of job listings, to be clearly looking to change this.

Apple is looking for employees

Anthony Chivetta, a member of Apple’s OS X team, posted links to a pair of new job openings on his team via his Twitter account on Monday. There he revealed that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is looking for employees who can “help improve the performance and battery life of OS X.”

The first of those positions listed is a listing for a Software Power Infrastructure Engineer which suggests that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is, like others, plagued by limited hardware capabilities and instead will look to slim down the battery use of its current software and need an employee who will “design the latest tools to automate the collection power information.”

The second position is for a Software Power Engineer, as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) seeks someone who will work on efficiency on both OS X and its applications that are bundled with its OS.

Both jobs are to be located at Apple’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

Power efficiency has been a key focus for Apple’s Mac lineup in 2013, thanks in part to Intel’s latest Haswell processors. The company’s MacBook Air models were updated July with the new low-power processor offering all-day battery life. New Haswell-equipped MacBook Pros are also expected to arrive in the coming weeks and are expected to greatly increase battery life.

Mavericks is both the most powerful OS X ever

Power consumption and battery life are also key areas of focus for Apple’s forthcoming OS X Mavericks operating system update. Apple has boasted that Mavericks is both the most powerful OS X ever, while also being the most power-efficient version of the platform. The company has not, however, given many details that suggest how this could be possible.

Key features in Mavericks include Timer Coalescing, which groups low-level operations together to reduce CPU usage, and App Nap, which places applications that are hidden from view on a sort of timeout. Clearly Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) doesn’t believe that they are getting the most from its batteries given the job listings posted today.